Articles by Louis Columbus

In good times marketing and sales get all the credit for increases in sales and profits, but in bad times, IT gets the brunt of the cost-cutting pressure. What have been missing are truer measures of return on investment (ROI) for companies adopting customer-facing strategies. What's really needed is a more focused approach to quantifying the contribution of marketing, while at the same time questioning some long-held beliefs about ROI...

During the last downturn nearly every enterprise software vendor stayed alive for a quarter or more due to their support and maintenance revenue streams. Today, support and maintenance comprises the majority of revenue for many CRM vendors, both public and private Existing customers are carrying the financial load of the CRM industry today. With ...

The bottom line is that today the analytics used in many small manufacturing companies starts and ends with Microsoft Excel spreadsheets. There are entire manufacturing operations run off Excel, fulfilling the roles of demand planner, manufacturing scheduling, and the continual maintenance of bills of materials, in addition to many other tasks Iro...

Prospects, customers and investors must have a lingering question in their minds with the announcement of a new CEO at Siebel: "Since George Shaheen was already on the board and capable of major influence, why haven't things changed already?" Putting a board member into the CEO slot seems like window dressing and let's be honest -- just perpetuates the inward-centric view this company has of itself...

For the last four years, I've been teaching an international business course occasionally for a local MBA Program. My students are all working professionals who come to class for discussion and debate, not sermons. Case studies are the perfect teaching tool for this audience; there is plenty of room for debate and analysis. Layer in expansion into high-growth economies, and class attendance soars...

Home-grown ERP systems are the Oscar Madisons of the IT world. Grizzled by years of service yet reluctant to change, these massive home-grown systems resist the efforts of CIOs to transform them. More often than not, the home-grown ERP system ends up changing the CIO. The complexity and lack of clarity makes some CIOs yearn for hosted applications to increase responsiveness...

Blogging is quickly becoming part of the online lexicon of marketing, sales and support organizations as companies look for better ways to connect with customers The Pew Internet and American Life Project published a report in January based on two blog surveys. The report is free and can be downloaded from their site, and it makes for interesting ...

There's a dangerous undercurrent tugging at even the best manufacturer and distribution channel relationships: the inability to set and manage expectations based on supply chain visibility While many manufacturers insist they have the ability to make and keep commitments based on visibility into multiple layers of their supply chains, their dealers...

The allure of automating the most common tasks involving channel partners, manufacturers and distributors is so sexy that this corner of the CRM market erupted with growth during the dot-com bubble. Today it's collapsing faster than a souffle pulled from the oven too fast When the number of firms offering Partner Relationship Management, or PRM, g...

Many manufacturers rely on special pricing requests, or exceptions to standard pricing, for a large part of their indirect channel revenue. Even for direct accounts, many manufacturers have given their sales managers and regional directors control over price limits to increase responsiveness. But these strategies don't pay off for either manufacturers or software vendors. That's because the systems that support special pricing are broken...

What makes channel, sales and service partnerships messy? Contracts, lots of them, for office leases, for equipment, even to prove the partnerships' existence to local, state and national governments Problems coordinating all these commitments -- buried in contracts that are stuffed into filing cabinets and forgotten -- cost companies millions of d...

Too many companies seem to believe that the right technology is the key to e-commerce success But the firms that really make e-commerce pay off don't simply hand over their e-commerce destinies to consultants, system integrators or vendors....

Too often channel strategies ranging from the most tactical and short-term to the most strategic and multiyear fail. Success or failure of a channel management strategy has nothing to do with the time horizon and everything to do with perspective, timing and getting away from a "one-and-done" mentality A channel management strategy is never done.

While all eyes were focused on Oracle closing the PeopleSoft deal this week, a series of announcements from SAP and Microsoft may prove to be even more significant to the IT industry overall and to CRM specifically in the long term Within the next five years SAP and Microsoft will change the landscape with their efforts in integration and replatfor...

While January 1 is a great mile-marker in any business timeline, the urgency for change needs to be dictated by honest assessments rather than by the flip of calendar pages. We all have enough to do already, and no one wants another action item list. That's why resolutions can turn out to be counterproductive Too many companies enter the new year ...

Think of this scenario: You're shopping for a new home and instead of guiding you into a single-digit fixed-rate mortgage, lenders try to persuade you that an adjustable mortgage indexed to your income makes more sense. Structuring mortgages like that makes no sense, and it's making less and less sense to purchase software that way Value-based pric...

Many companies question if the dollars spent with research and advisory firms are delivering unbiased, accurate guidance. This is particularly true in the CRM industry, where analysts influence short lists, sales cycles, and media coverage extensively. Analysts, in short, can make or break a start-up company relatively quickly Getting to the truth ...

It's time for a reality check: When it comes to managing e-commerce strategies in your company, how do results line up with expectations? Too many companies hold on to incredibly inefficient Web sites chock full of order capture systems that lead nowhere except to someone's Outlook folders, or catalogs that were last refreshed in 2001. There are e...

The CRM systems of many companies fail because they don't properly manage the expectations of prospects and customers. What's been missing is the ability to capture the moment of truth with every prospect or customer and then bring these insights into a broader mosaic of what the many segments of a customer base like, don't like and expect from you...

In the last U.S. presidential election the candidates clashed on the issue of privatizing the Social Security system I'll leave the political debate to the professional politicians, but I would like to address this matter from the standpoint of millions of U.S. workers. Many of them are already banking on their 401(k)s as the largest part of thei...